


Guiding Light

by arenoseAnima



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:57:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arenoseAnima/pseuds/arenoseAnima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat reveals his blood to Kanaya on LORAF. (Split off from <a href="archiveofourown.org/works/295070">Prompt and Circumstance.</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guiding Light

Karkat stands in front of Kanaya’s hive in the Land of Rays and Frogs; the smooth white tower corkscrews helically into the sky, looking for all the world like another one of the pillars of light that come down to meet it. He knows, as the Knight, he needs to assist the Space player with her important work - his lusus told him as much, and he’d rather be fucked with a juggling club than forget a single word that chitinous bastard has to say to him.

The game didn’t take into account that he’s a worthless freak with the sun’s fire running through his veins, though. If he’s going to help Kanaya, he’s pretty sure she’s going to find out the color of his blood. If he’s lucky, she’ll cull him. If he’s unlucky, she’ll never speak to him again. He rests his palm on the door of the hive; it’s cold and white and about as fucking accessible as a lighthouse to Tavros. This isn’t going to work. He pulls his hand back and turns around to descend the mountain underneath Kanaya’s hive. Maybe he’ll fall off and die to some giant fish and he won’t have to worry about this bullshit anymore. Maybe he can find the next gate and forget about all this. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Karkat,” calls a high, sweet voice. Karkat is so startled he kicks himself in the back of the leg and crumples down the hill a ways. He’s treated to the prettiest laugh he’s ever heard, like he ever thinks anything is pretty, so, so different from mandibles scraping together - more like the rustle of dusty wings in sunlight. When the fuck did he get so poetic? He rolls over onto his back and stares up at the tower. Someone is leaning out of a window with her chin propped in her hands, tall and slim, her skin practically glowing with the light from a nearby ray.

“Kanaya?” he blurts, pushing himself up on his hands. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, it really is her. He can tell just by looking that she’s exactly the kind of person who would capitalize every word in a sentence. Not capitalize THE GOOD WAY. The Fucking Annoying Meddling Perfect Pale As Fuck Way. His guts are suddenly churning worse than they were before. Half of him wants to lay back down and roll down the hill, and the other half wants to bound up the wall and leap through the window and find the nearest pile.

“Quite,” Kanaya says. “If you’d like to get up now, you may come in. I have medical supplies if you’ve injured yourself.”

“Fuck you,” Karkat says automatically, then covers his mouth. Shit. “I mean,” he says through his hand, then drops his hand because there’s no way she’s going to be able to hear him through his porkbeast mitts -

Kanaya laughs again and swishes inside, away from the window. Karkat just lays there for a minute in case he actually throws up. Because he’s pretty sure he’s going to puke goddamn everywhere. There has never been a troll in the whole smoking cinder of a world who is as nervous as he is at this moment. He picks himself up and half-ass dusts off his pants, like he’d ever look half as good as her if he had a sweep with one of those rolling sticky things, and he pushes open the door.

Inside it looks like a tent exploded. There’s cloth hanging everywhere, curtains way better than Sollux’s shitty motif ones, carpet so thick he loses about a foot of height he can’t afford to live without. Kanaya’s there, too, drawing his eye from all the bright colors. She’s near the staircase, her hands clasped at her stomach, fingers tapping on her wrists. Her mouth is twisted up into something that he thinks is supposed to be a smile but mostly looks like she sunk her fangs into a puckerbulb.

“Hey,” he says, short of anything else fucking intelligent.

“Hello,” she says, and smiles for real. Fuck. There is a noose around his heart and somebody just kicked the chair out from under his feet.

“I think I’m supposed to help you or some shit. I mean, that’s what my sprite said. Did yours tell you anything useful, or just spout a bunch of cryptic bullshit like they usually do?” He crosses the room to her and almost trips again when he accidentally sees her shoulders.

“She informed me I would be receiving help from a good friend. I had hoped my assumption that it would be you was correct.”

Karkat stops in front of her and crosses his arms, rubbing his hands up and down his forearms. “Look,” he says, not looking at her like the disingenuous piece of shit he is. “Kanaya, I mean, it’s really fucking great to finally meet you and all that maudlin garbage. But I’m pretty sure you’re about to kick me out of your hive and salt the fucking earth I walked on and then hunt me down and cut me into pieces and piss on all the pieces, so let’s get this over w - “

“You’re bleeding,” she whispers. It takes him a minute for the words to percolate through his head to the section of his think pan that manages mortal terror. He starts to turn, to turn and run away because she’s lifting her hand, she’s probably going to grab his skinny cluckbeast neck and strangle every drop of life and freak red blood out of him, slit his throat and drain him into the sea where nobody’ll ever have to see that sludge again, and oh no he can’t move there are stones in his heart and ice in his toes, and her hand is on his neck and this is it he’s gone he’s finally gone -

\- and she presses her thumb to a cut he hadn’t even seen, then takes it away, drops of red shining. Her eyes don’t leave his as she puts her thumb to her lips and licks the blood away, just a flicker of grey over her skin.

“Let’s get you a bandage, Karkat,” she murmurs. The world sways like a ship on stormy waters, and then everything is black as he passes out on top of her.

 


End file.
